A Palestinian Authority (PA) court has sentenced a 28-year-old PA policeman to death for allegedly spying for Israel, and the Legal Forum for the Land of Israel thinks the United States envoy to the Middle East should be aware of this human rights violation.

The convict, a resident of the El Aroub neighborhood, was found guilty of assisting the IDF in the elimination of a terrorist in 2002, during the siege of the Church of Nativity. The convict served in the Presidential Guard in Bethlehem at the time. In addition, he allegedly assisted the IDF to arrest other terrorists.

In an urgent letter to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, the Legal Forum for Israel says: “We do not know whether the man really is a collaborator with Israel, but in any case, he does not deserve death. You, as the person in charge of Israel's security, should make it clear that Israel will not allow the sentence to be carried out. Israel must intervene, enter the Palestinian area in Hevron and extricate the man unless the PA agrees to commute his sentence.”

Back to Arafat's style

The Forum calls the sentence “unimaginably cruel” and notes that the PA has not executed people for the last seven years. “The return to the uncivilized norms that typified the rule of Yasser Arafat is dangerous and shows that whoever trusts the PA and gives it weapons and armored cars is behaving irresponsibly,” it added.

The Forum demands that the matter be brought up before President Barack Obama and his envoy to the region, Sen. George Mitchell, because they “place trust” in the PA and wish empower it.